I Find Ash Wednesday to Be a License to Hypocrisy

Note: It's Matthew 6, not Matthew 5

Ash Wednesday 2018 falls on the same day as Valentine's Day for this year. As a former Roman Catholic, I can testify the hypocrisy of Ash Wednesday not just with my folks but with almost everyone around me as well. I always called Christmas as the most hypocritical time of the year - but haven't we forgotten Lent is an extension of that hypocrisy?

Why do I find it hypocritical? There's the real reason behind Ash Wednesday. I've noticed how people have used their ash marks to brag to everyone that they're fasting (or better yet abstaining). However, the Bible gives specific instructions about fasting. Matthew 6:16-18 tells us that when you fast - wash your face and don't make it for show. 

This is pretty much like the hypocrisy of Ahab. Do you remember the account when Ahab fasted, wore sackcloth and applied ashes on his head in 1 Kings 21:27-28? Unfortunately the next chapter shows us how Ahab's repentance was just for show. Ahab refused food, he was on fasting, he looked like he repented but his attitude in 1 Kings 22 showed that he had a false repentance. He still consulted the false prophets instead of the prophet of the LORD. He even had the concerned prophet Micaiah imprisoned for warning him about going to Ramoth-Gilead. We later read in 1 Chronicles 219:2 where the prophet Jehu rebuked Jehoshaphat of his foolish decisions. So what did that make Ahab's so-called repentance? It was all for show. He was just doing it hoping to gain forgiveness from God but he was still hardened in sin. 

No one should never mistake repentance and penance or the fruits meet of repentance with repentance. It's possible to go through with every ritual like abstinence from meat, walking while kneeling, voluntary crucifixion (though the Roman Catholic institution condemned the practice as heretical) and go to confession as much as one wants. Repentance is taken from the Greek word metanoneia which means, "A change of mind which begets a change in purpose." Penance is merely outward. Repentance starts from within which results to a change o life.

Ash Wednesday opens yet another door to hypocrisy. How often do many people religiously attend Mass, they perform all the religious obligations and the like and return back to their sinful habits after Easter Sunday? I guess such people think that they can sin all they want because they've got the sacraments and priests to "save their souls". The hypocrisy is anything but surprising considering I've been a former Roman Catholic myself.